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Saturday, September 6, 2014

Reed Farrel Coleman On Being 1/3 of Robert B. Parker

On
Being 1/3 of Robert B. Parker

It was early May 2013 and the day before I was to
leave for St. Louis to do my annual Suspense Night gig at the St. Louis County
Library. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon and I was relaxing after having
packed for my trip. My agent’s phone number flashed across my TV screen. The
conversation that followed went something like this:

The rest,
as they say, is history. Or it soon will be. On September 9th, two
days from now, Robert B. Parker’s Blind
Spot, a Jesse Stone novel by Reed Farrel Coleman will be on book shelves
and available through your favorite e-tailer. These last sixteen months have
been quite an interesting journey. Most of it has been wonderful, but many
aspects of it have been frustrating as well. That’s pretty much how everything
in life goes, right? There always seems to be this odd balance in life and this
experience has sure borne that out.

First,
I got the call from my agent about a week after I finished TheHollow Girl, the
final novel in my Moe Prager Mystery series. What, I sometimes wonder, would
have happened had they offered me this gig before I had completed the Moe
series? When I asked my new editor at Putnam if she was aware that I was
wrapping up the Moe series, she said she had no clue. I figured that I got the
gig not only based upon my writing ability, but also on the essay I wrote for
the book In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery
Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero, edited by
Otto Penzler. My essay? “Go East
Young Man: Robert B. Parker, Jesse Stone, and Spenser.” Yet again, I was wrong.
My editor only read the essay after I was hired.

One of
my great frustrations was that I wasn’t permitted to make this deal public for
eleven months. Yes, I could tell my family, but for the most part I operated
under the threat of losing the deal if it became public knowledge. Only I
needed to be able to tell some colleagues in order to seek their advice and to
access their expertise on Jesse Stone and Mr. Parker. At points during the
writing of Blind Spot, I felt more
like an undercover operative than an author. It really came to a head at
Bouchercon Albany when I was sitting in on a panel about the future of PI
fiction and the moderator, Ali Karim, asked me my opinion on the phenomenon of
writers taking over series made famous by now deceased authors. You can imagine
that I was biting the insides of my cheeks pretty hard when I said, “I guess it
depends on the writers involved and the series.”

For the
most part, though, it’s been great and all the little frustrations worth it. It
is a total honor to have been chosen to follow in Robert B. Parker’s footsteps
and to continue one of the great series in crime fiction history. Jesse Stone
is that rarest of commodities: a perfectly flawed protagonist. There are many
flawed protagonists. There are some perfect protagonists. But very few are
perfectly flawed. What do I mean? If you know the series, you know what I mean.
If Blind Spot is your first Jesse
Stone novel, you’ll get it right away. If you have read any of my own work, you
know I have a real weak spot for strong, yet vulnerable protagonists. But Jesse
and Moe are very different creatures. Moe wore his heart on his sleeve. The
only thing Jesse wears on his sleeve is his Paradise Police Department patch. While
I haven’t tried to do a direct imitation of Mr. Parker’s style, I have tried to
be true to his characters. I think of it this way: I use the same camera as Mr.
Parker did, but I've changed lenses.

I do
wonder how the book will be received by critics and longtime fans of the
series. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE

WOMEN'S SPACES WOMEN'S PLACES

CLOTHES LINES from 75 Western North Carolina Women Writers

CLOTHES LINES from 75 Western North Carolina Women Writers

I'm a lover of words and a lover of images.

The photos you see in the blog posts were mostly shot by me or by husband Donald. Or, they're old family photos - a lovely little benefit of being a part of families who recognized the beauty of preserving our history through photography.

If the photos are not ours, I have tried whenever possible to caption or link the photos to their source. This hasn't always been possible as there are a lot of uncredited images available through the internet.

My sincere thanks to the generosity of so many talented photographers who so graciously share their work for so many of us to enjoy, share and learn from.

IF you see a photo here that is a copyright infringement, please send me an email (barleykw @ appstate dot com) and I'll remove it immediately.

Books Read

Every year I promise myself I'm going to keep a log of books I'm reading. And I immediately forget. Then I remember again, but only after I've already read a few books, but can't be sure I'll remember them all and so - - can't bring myself to start the list. It's sort of like missing the first 30 minutes of a movie. I just can't watch it if I've missed the beginning. And being the anal ol' soul I am, I can't bring myself to start a list if I can't be sure it's going to be a complete one.So.I decided to keep a list during 2010 and found it to be a fun thing. Especially for a compulsive list-maker like myself.

FTC Disclosure Notice

FTC has a regulation which went into effect in December, 2009 which says, basically - "Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined." Significantly fined. So. Since I happen to be an amateur blogger who sometimes receives free books, here's my required FTC Disclosure Notice: Dear FTC - Regarding review copies of books obtained for this blog. No other compensation is accepted beyond review copies of books - ever. When I do write a review, or opinion, the source of the book cited will be disclosed in the post in which the review/opinon appears. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me.